Chapter 7
seven
BILLIE
I am twenty minutes late to Melissa’s baby shower, which I tell myself is basically on time in baby shower terms. I stand on Melissa’s front porch for one extra second, looking at the banner— IT’S A GIRL, huge and pink and absolutely committed to the mission— and I take a breath, knowing I’m stuck here for the next two hours.
Just as I’m building up the courage to knock, the door opens.
Melissa stands on the other side, a knowing look in her eyes.
“Tyler bailed,” Melissa says, by way of greeting.
I open my mouth, searching for a response. Melissa crosses her arms. She’s in a floral wrap dress that accommodates her spectacular pregnancy.
“Tyler did not bail,” I say, stepping inside. “He had a?—”
“He bailed.”
“He had a previously scheduled thing?—“
“A bail,” Melissa confirms, nodding, holding the door wide. “He bailed on my baby shower.”
I step into the warmth of her house, which smells like vanilla and those little sandwiches that only exist at events like this. Everything is just a little too much— balloons, flowers, a stack of pastel-wrapped gifts on a side table— but in that warm, abundant way that makes a house feel nostalgic.
“He forgot he had a video game event,” I say, keeping my voice carefully neutral. “With a friend. He’s been planning it for a while.”
“He forgot he had a video game event,” Melissa repeats back to me, in a tone that says she is storing evidence for an impending trial.
“It’s fine,” I say.
“Billie.”
“Today isn’t about me,” I say, waving a hand in the air.
“You can hate on Tyler later, but not today, when it’s all about you and the baby.
” I hand her the gift I’ve been carrying– a bag wrapped in pale yellow tissue paper.
“Here. I got the one from the registry, and also a back-up because I wasn’t sure if someone else might get the same one, and also a card, and I brought the cake stand you asked me to hold at my place and I can set it up right now?—”
“Billie.” She takes both my hands with one of hers. The other rests against her belly. “You are at a party. You are a guest. You are not here to work.”
“I was just going to?—”
“No tasks,” she says, steering me firmly toward the main room, where a handful of other guests are scattered with pink drinks and small plates. “No helping. No organizing. I want you to just be a person and not be helpful for two hours.”
“That sounds very difficult,” I say.
She ignores me. “We’re playing a game,” she says, plucking a sheet of paper from the stack on the side table and pressing it into my hands.
It’s a grid of baby photos— tiny faces, all ears and eyes and extraordinary concentration.
“Baby Picture Bingo. Everyone’s photos are on there.
You match the baby to the guest. Whoever gets the most right wins. ”
“What’s the prize?”
She cups her hand around my ear. “It’s huge,” she whispers, low and conspiratorial. “And I want you to win.”
I look at her. “Me?”
“Yes, you, because I love you and you had a bad week. Now,” she says, already pivoting. Her eyes scan the room. “You have to meet Alana.” She raises a hand in the air, making a small summoning gesture across the room.
Not the woman from instagram, I think, cringing at my own blatant spying last night.
I feel like such a creeper that I already know everything about her— the perfectly filtered photos in European cities, the yoga studio, and the eyelashes.
I brace myself. Meeting someone so fabulous is going to hurt, especially now, when my boyfriend is being useless, my best friend is pregnant, and my boss doesn’t think I’m worth a promotion.
Oh well, I think. Pick your tits up, Billie, be an adult about it.
Let’s rip this off like a bandaid. I put on my best smile.
And then Alana is there.
She is, in person, somehow more than her Instagram, which I would have said was not possible.
She’s in a pink dress that’s fitted, radiant, and completely without effort.
Her lashes are, as advertised, real, or if they’re not real, they’re the best fakes I’ve ever seen.
She descends on me with both arms open like we are old friends reuniting at an airport, and before I have fully processed that this is happening, I am being hugged by this woman.
“Billie!” she says, beaming, stepping back to look at me with a warm, assessing expression. “Oh my God, you are so cute. You look exactly like someone I’d want to be friends with. I can just tell.”
I have no response to this. She wants to be friends… with me?
Melissa, from somewhere behind me, gives my shoulder a small, encouraging pat. Then she is gone— absorbed back into the party now that she’s completed her mission— and I’m alone with Alana and a sheet of baby photos.
“I already have half of these,” Alana says, nodding at my sheet and pulling out her own.
She leans close. “See her?” She nods toward a woman across the room, red wine in hand, laughing at something her neighbor said.
She has short, blunt-cut brown hair and the kind of laugh that involves her whole face.
“Baby photo number four,” Alana says, completely certain, without hesitation. “Dimple, right cheek. Same laugh.”
I look at photo four. The infant in it is laughing— impossibly, with its whole face, just like the woman— and there, just visible in the crease of its cheek: a dimple.
“How did you?—”
“I’m good at reading people,” Alana says “Also, I may have paid her ten bucks to tell me which photo is her.” She winks at me. “We should help each other. We're going to win this.”
“Oh,” I say, feeling a little awkward. Then, I add, “Well, Melissa said she want me to win, and I think that meant working alone?—”
“She told me that too,” Alana says, without even blinking. “How dare she!”
The idea makes me deflate, a little. Was Melissa kidding when she said she wanted me to win? We stare at each other. Then Alana laughs first— a bright, unself-conscious sound— and I follow, and just like that, I am disarmed. Now I’m not sure if she was joking or not.
We scan our sheets together. We talk. It’s easy— easier than it should be, really, with a stranger. She asks about Melissa, and I tell her about how we met.
And then she asks: “So what do you do?”
I open my mouth. I feel the word sitting there, waiting to come out— the word I’ve been answering this question with for seven years, the word printed in black font on a white nametag that I left in a break room trash can: The Assistant.
I think about last night and Tyler on the couch and the dishes in the sink.
And I stare at Alana, who is radiant and reads people like they’re open books.
And then, for the first time in my life, I tell a really big lie:
“I’m a negotiator,” I hear myself say. “At a luxury real estate firm. Commercial deals, mostly. Large-scale. It’s—” I manage a small, confident shrug, “—a lot of pressure, but I’m good at it.”
There is a pause. Half a second, maybe. Then Alana’s eyes light up with an energized, recalibrated interest— the kind of look that says: oh, okay, you’re someone.
“Oh my God,” she says. “That’s so impressive.” She tilts her head. “I knew it. I could just tell you were smart. You have that thing, you know? That X Factor. I bet you’re really good at your job.”
I am good at my job. I hold the warmth of that a little longer than I should.
“Thanks,” I say, and my voice comes out steadier than I expect. “I love being a negotiator!”
The lie comes out in a tumble– again. But for exactly this moment, standing in Melissa's warm, too-pink living room, matching baby photos and being seen— actually seen— by the most magnetic person I have ever met, I can almost believe the lie is a truth.
And if I concentrate hard enough on that feeling, I can almost ignore the small, correct, extremely inconvenient part of my brain that says: that was a really stupid thing to do, Billie.
“I just got back from Montenegro,” Alana says, switching the subject as she takes a delicate sip from her pink sparkling drink.
“Before that, Budapest. Before that, Croatia. It's like— sometimes I think I travel more than I’m home, you know? Which is crazy, because I have such a good life here in Chicago.”
“What do you do?” I ask, because it’s only fair, after she's asked me.
She waves a hand in the air, an airy, dismissive gesture. “I guess you could say I’m in sales. Imports and exports,” she says. “Very boring. Not nearly as impressive as what you do. The best part about my job though is that it led me to Rodrigo.”
“Rodrigo?” I repeat, pretending not to know who the man is even though I’ve already stalked his Instagram.
“My boyfriend,” she sighs, like she’s describing a luxury item that she is also a little tired of.
“He is— okay, how do I put this? He is so devoted. Like, intensely devoted. It’s sweet, really, but I had to literally shoo him away so I could come meet you properly, because he just— he wants to be wherever I am, all the time.
He’s so obsessed with me it’s almost annoying.
” A pause. “Almost. I’m thinking about marrying him.
He’s brought it up a few times and I think eventually I’ll have to say yes.
Foreign men are just so romantic, you know?
“Oh boy, do I know!” I agree, even though I have absolutely no idea what foreign men are like.
I’m constructing a mental picture of Rodrigo’s personality. I’m imagining that he trails after Alana like a very beautiful shadow. Maybe he does the dishes without being asked and carries her bags through European airports.
“Let me see where he wandered off to,” Alana says, scanning the room with her blue eyes. “There,” she says, and nods.
I follow her gaze across the room.